Snow Leopard has long been touted as an OS X upgrade focusing primarily on core OS improvements such as system performance and efficiency. Some of the under the hood improvements expected in OS X 10.6 include a new Finder completely re-written in Cocoa, 64 bit support, Quicktime X, and support for multi-core processors and GPU processing.

Flying somewhat under the radar, however, are possible system wide UI changes to OS X itself which allegedly will involve a darker and more flattened look for OS X. The new look is said to be called “Marble”, and will likely borrow a few UI elements from the more recent versions of iTunes and iPhoto.

Developers have had access to pre-release builds of Snow Leopard for a while now, but AppleInsider is now reporting that those builds “have been stripped of several features including a major UI overhaul that the company is now preparing for broader consumption.“

The report goes on to note that Apple is currently considering unveiling some if its UI enhancements in future developer builds, but is wary of doing so out of fear that those changes will inevitably find their way online. After all, it was only about a month ago that leaked images from a recent developer build of Snow Leopard found their way online, prompting Apple to contact a few websites with requests to remove the photos.

That being the case, Apple will most likely decide to wait until the WWDC this June to showcase Snow Leopard’s UI overhaul. Whatever the UI changes encompass, they’re bound to create a stir as this is gearing up to be one of the more significant UI changes from Apple since the debut of Aqua in the original OS X.

1 Comments For This Post

I think that they wouldn’t change anything just for look/feel but rather, reserve any changes for when they will change how it works. Which implies, for me, that they will introduce significant UI changes only for when they are ready to provide multi-touch on the desktop. Which should be soon, considering Microsoft will have this stuff in developer’s hands by the end of the year with .NET 4 / Windows 7.